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U.A. High School had hosted disaster-response drills severe enough to rattle windows three buildings away, provisional licensing examinations that reduced otherwise confident teenagers to bundles of nerves, international hero conferences, police seminars, charity events, support-technology demonstrations.
On one particularly unfortunate afternoon, an experimental cafeteria appliance showcase resulted in three evacuations and a permanent ban on Hatsume-family prototypes anywhere near the eastern administrative wing.
Shota Aizawa had survived all of those things, frequently sleep deprived and occasionally injured, so he felt reasonably qualified to recognize a terrible idea when he saw one, and the combination currently spread across Training Field Seven had all the necessary ingredients: convicted criminals, unlicensed vigilantes, several hundred children, and an alarming quantity of glitter.
“You’re scowling again,” Nemuri Kayama observed.
“I always look like this.” Shota shifted the paper cup of coffee in his hand and took another swallow, although it had already cooled enough to become offensive.
Nemuri lowered her sunglasses just enough to peer over the frames. “No, your normal expression says you’re tired and vaguely disappointed by humanity. This one says you warned everyone this was a terrible idea and you’re waiting for something to catch fire so you can become unbearable about being right.”
Shota glanced toward the collection of brightly colored support-technology booths on the opposite side of the field, where several student volunteers were plugging extension cords into equipment he had not personally inspected. “Nothing is going to catch fire.”
“That sounded dangerously optimistic.”
“It was a threat.”
Her laugh followed him as he continued surveying the field, where bright canvas awnings, strings of multicolored pennants, temporary activity stations, and cheerful directional signs had transformed part of U.A.’s campus into something aggressively festive.
Student volunteers in matching blue shirts hurried between tables with pamphlets, bottled water, child-sized safety helmets, and boxes of inexpensive hero merchandise, while somewhere near the main stage Hizashi was testing a microphone despite possessing absolutely no biological need for one. Every burst of amplified sound made Shota’s left eye twitch, which Nemuri noticed and politely pretended not to find hilarious.
The far end of the field was considerably less cheerful, although Shota suspected several of the people gathered there preferred it that way. Twelve participants in gray-and-blue work uniforms stood beneath the supervision of rehabilitation counselors and police liaisons, surrounded by folded tables, rescue-training equipment, recycling containers, temporary barriers, and boxes of supplies that needed to be distributed before the first buses arrived.
Some had criminal convictions, some were there because of vigilante offenses, and a few had accumulated enough poor decisions to fit into both categories. The Restorative Heroics Initiative had been Nezu’s idea, which should have been enough to make Shota suspicious before the first planning meeting ever began, but he supported the principle even when the practical details made him want to crawl into his sleeping bag and refuse to emerge.
The justice system had spent decades cycling low-level offenders through detention without addressing the conditions that helped produce repeat offenses, while people with poorly controlled Quirks were routinely released with no better understanding of their abilities than they had possessed when they committed the offense in the first place. Nezu’s solution was a carefully monitored program offering counseling, remedial education, Quirk training, employment assistance, community service, and, when appropriate, restorative work with communities affected by participants’ actions.
The vigilante cases followed a slightly different track, because somebody who had committed robbery or assault needed a different intervention from somebody who had illegally intervened in emergencies because they believed good intentions were a substitute for a license, training, or common sense. There was even a juvenile diversion branch, although its participants were kept under youth-services supervision and followed different legal requirements from the adults.
Today was one of the rare occasions when carefully selected members of both sides of the initiative were completing community service in the same public setting, which was how Shota had ended up responsible for twenty-nine-year-old Daichi Moriyama and fifteen-year-old Miki Tachibana at the same time. He had simply never expected to supervise either of them while preschoolers in All Might hats wandered nearby.
“It’ll be fine,” Nemuri said, bumping her shoulder lightly against his.
Shota gave her a look. “You saying that has never once improved a situation.”
“Your faith in me is always touching.”
“My faith in you is evidence-based.”
A metallic crash erupted from behind one of the supply tents before she could answer, followed by a startled curse and several folding chairs hitting the pavement. Shota closed his eyes for half a second, while Nemuri patted his shoulder with entirely fraudulent sympathy.
“Barely eight in the morning,” she murmured. “You didn’t even have to wait long.”
“I hate you.”
“You’d miss me.”
Unfortunately, she was correct, but Shota had no intention of rewarding her with that information. He left his coffee on the nearest table and crossed the grass, his capture weapon shifting around his shoulders as several members of the rehabilitation group straightened at his approach.
They were not all afraid of him, but most had learned during the first three weeks of the pilot that irritating Eraser Head rarely produced anything useful, and even the participants who enjoyed testing authority had discovered that Shota could outwait stubbornness with an almost supernatural level of patience. Sena Kurose stood beside the collapsed chairs with one hand raised defensively, while the other remained firmly attached to the metal frame of a folding chair.
“I didn’t do anything,” he announced.
Shota stopped in front of him and looked from his face to the chair hanging from his palm. “That sentence has never made anyone look less guilty.”
“I was moving them.”
“With your hands?”
Sena hesitated before lifting the attached chair slightly. “Mostly.”
A snort came from behind him, and Shota did not bother turning around. “Moriyama.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You made a noise.”
“I breathed.”
“Judgmentally.”
“That’s not illegal.”
“Neither is making you stack chairs for the next hour.”
Daichi Moriyama pushed away from the stack of tables he had been leaning against and released a long, put-upon sigh. At twenty-nine, he was broad enough through the shoulders that the program-issued shirt strained slightly across his back, while years of fighting had left their history in small, blunt marks across his face and arms.
A pale scar split one eyebrow, another disappeared beneath the collar near his neck, and tattoos covered much of his forearms. He had the sort of appearance that made strangers create space around him on public transportation, which Shota suspected Daichi had once enjoyed and now found more tiring than he would ever admit.
His Quirk, Impact, allowed his body to absorb part of the kinetic force directed into him, store it briefly, and release it again. Daichi had learned as a teenager that being punched made his next punch considerably worse for whoever had struck him, and apparently nobody had seriously explored other uses for the ability before the court system collected three assault convictions, two property-damage charges, and one conviction for intimidation while he worked as hired muscle.
“Help him,” Shota said.
Daichi stared at Sena and then at the chair attached to his hand. “If he sticks me to furniture, I’m leaving him there.”
“You’re too heavy,” Sena muttered.
“That sounded personal.”
“It was scientific.”
Hoshino, one of the counselors assigned to the initiative, pinched the bridge of her nose while Daichi reluctantly approached. Before this program, Shota had assumed supervising teenagers was one of the most effective ways to discover every weakness in human patience; he had since learned that supervising adults who had spent years avoiding consequences required an entirely different form of endurance.
He turned toward the edge of the work area and found Miki Tachibana beside the emergency cones she had been assigned to arrange in three straight rows for a children’s rescue demonstration. They were no longer in straight rows. They zigzagged across the pavement in what looked suspiciously like a mobility course, and Miki stood at one end with her weight balanced forward on the balls of her feet while studying the gaps between them.
“Tachibana.”
One sneaker squeaked against the pavement as she jumped, and she turned slowly, short black hair brushing her jaw while the two electric-blue streaks near her temples caught the morning light. “No.”
“I didn’t say anything yet.”
“You were going to.”
“I was going to ask why the cones aren’t where they belong.”
Miki glanced at the diagram clipped to the supply crate and then back at her arrangement. “The diagram is boring.”
“The diagram is also the assignment.”
“This is more efficient.”
“For what?”
“Mobility practice.”
“This isn’t mobility practice.”
“Everything can be mobility practice.”
“That philosophy is part of why you got arrested.”
The words came out sharper than he intended, and Miki’s posture closed almost immediately. Her mouth tightened, one shoulder lifting defensively as she looked away, and Shota regretted the phrasing even though the point itself remained true.
Miki had spent fourteen months conducting unauthorized patrols through three neighborhoods in western Musutafu, during which she had interrupted robberies, found a missing child, helped evacuate residents during two fires, prevented an assault, contaminated crime scenes, interfered with police investigations, pursued suspects through populated streets, and caused a cyclist to crash when she launched herself through an intersection without checking the landing zone properly.
The neighborhood itself was divided over her: some residents considered her reckless and dangerous, while others insisted Little Comet had done more for them than professional heroes who usually arrived after the trouble was already over. At fifteen, Miki had once wanted nothing more than to enter a hero program.
When the routes she tried had closed in front of her, she had taken that rejection as proof that she would have to become a hero without permission. Shota understood how a teenager could arrive at that conclusion. Understanding it did not make it safe.
He nodded toward the cones. “Put them back, please. The kids need the approved layout.”
Miki’s eyes flicked toward him, and some of the stiffness eased from her shoulders. “Fine.”
“And don’t use Skip.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were absolutely going to.”
“You can’t prove that.”
“I can identify your bad ideas by posture now.”
“That sounds scientifically questionable.”
“Tachibana.”
“Fine.”
She bent to retrieve the first cone, muttering something about authoritarian cone placement, and Shota left before she could decide to investigate whether Erasure worked on sarcasm. By eight-thirty the first buses began arriving, and the relative quiet of the field disappeared beneath shoes squeaking over pavement, parents calling names, teachers performing increasingly desperate head counts, and delighted shrieks whenever a recognizable hero came into view.
A group of first-graders discovered Thirteen near the rescue pavilion and immediately began orbiting them like excited moons, while Cementoss found himself answering questions from a six-year-old wearing handmade rabbit ears who apparently had strong opinions about concrete density. Before the crowd grew too thick, Shota gathered the rehabilitation participants and repeated the rules.
They were to stay inside their assigned areas unless a counselor or U.A. staff member moved them, they would not demonstrate Quirks without approval, and they absolutely would not discuss the details of criminal cases with children. If a child wandered into the work area, immediate danger came first and a staff member came second; otherwise, nobody was suddenly volunteering for childcare.
Daichi folded his arms. “What if one asks me a question?”
“Answer appropriately.”
“That’s subjective.”
“It becomes much less subjective if you imagine me standing behind you while you answer.”
“That sounds threatening.”
“It is.”
A few people laughed, although the tension beneath the humor remained. Some participants had children of their own whom they rarely saw, others had younger siblings they had disappointed, and a few simply regarded anyone under eighteen as an unpredictable species best observed from a safe distance. Daichi fell firmly into the last category.
For almost an hour, nothing happened. Shota was beginning to distrust the peace when something small bumped into his leg. He looked down and found a little boy staring back at him. The child could not have been more than five, and he was tiny even for that age, with a riot of dark green curls that appeared to have defeated every attempt to tame them before he left home.
A yellow backpack covered in smiling All Might faces hung crookedly from his shoulders, freckles dotted both round cheeks, and his enormous green eyes moved from Shota’s face to his goggles and then immediately to the capture weapon looped around his neck. The laminated card hanging from the boy’s lanyard read MIDORIYA IZUKU — AGE 5, while somebody, almost certainly the child himself, had added FUTURE HERO underneath in green crayon. His eyes widened.
“Oh.”
The single breath held so much wonder that Shota almost smiled.
“Is that for catching villains?” Izuku asked, leaning forward to inspect the dark fabric. “It’s not regular rope, right? Because regular rope would be too stiff and maybe hurt somebody if you had to catch them, but that looks softer, except it has to be really strong because villains would pull really hard, and you wear goggles too, so maybe they hide where you’re looking because your Quirk needs your eyes, and if bad guys know where you’re looking then they know when you’re using it unless the goggles are for dust because if dust gets in your eyes—”
His words gathered speed while both hands rose and began sketching invisible diagrams in the air.
“—and you could use it for rescue too because if somebody fell you could catch them, but not around their neck because that would be bad, and maybe not their tummy if they were hurt, but under their arms could work unless they were falling really fast and then the force would—”
He stopped for one enormous breath. Shota had not yet managed to answer the first question.
“Midoriya Izuku!”
The boy froze. A woman hurried toward them from the registration area, clutching an event map in one hand and a handbag in the other, and the combination of worry and embarrassment on her face was familiar to anyone who had ever watched a small child move unexpectedly fast.
“Izuku, I asked you to stay beside me.”
“But Mama,” he said with complete sincerity, “he’s a hero.”
“Yes, sweetheart, but heroes are working.”
Izuku looked back up at Shota as though hoping this unfortunate claim might be overturned.
His mother bowed. “I’m so sorry, Aizawa-san. He gets excited, and once he starts thinking about Quirks he sometimes forgets that his feet are still moving.”
Shota could believe that.
“It’s fine.”
“I wasn’t bothering him,” Izuku said, although uncertainty immediately softened his voice. He tucked both hands behind his back and peered up through his curls. “I don’t think I was bothering him.”
“You weren’t.”
The change in the boy was immediate; his whole face brightened, the curls around his forehead bouncing when he straightened, and Shota briefly understood why some parents found discipline difficult. Inko mouthed a quiet thank-you over her son’s head before reaching for his hand, but Izuku had already spotted the rehabilitation work area.
Daichi was carrying rescue blocks, Sena was attempting to separate laminated signs without sticking any to himself, Kanae Fujimoto was helping another participant adjust a Quirk-control glove, and Miki stood beside her now-correctly arranged cones trying not to look toward the neighboring mobility demonstration. Izuku took in the matching uniforms, U.A. grounds, supervision, and work equipment. His mouth fell open.
“More hero students!”
The work area went strangely quiet. Inko started to correct him, but Izuku had already looked toward Daichi.
“Are they practicing?”
Daichi stopped with a crate in his arms.
“Are you practicing helping people?” Izuku asked him.
A man who had argued with police officers, prosecutors, judges, counselors, and Shota himself suddenly seemed to have no idea how to answer one small child. He glanced toward Shota. Shota raised an eyebrow and left him to his fate.
“…Yeah,” Daichi eventually said.
Izuku smiled as if he had just heard excellent news. “That’s really good!”
Daichi looked vaguely stunned.
Shota made what he would later blame on inadequate caffeine. “They’re part of a special U.A. training program.”
It was technically true.
Izuku bounced once on his toes. “Can I watch?”
“No,” Shota and Inko said together.
The boy deflated so dramatically that his backpack seemed to become heavier.
“We have a schedule, remember?” Inko reminded him as she crouched. “Rescue demonstration first.”
Some life returned to the curls.
“Then support equipment.”
More.
“And you wanted to see the hero costume exhibit.”
Izuku gasped. “Right!”
He took one step with her and then abruptly stopped, digging both hands into his backpack. Shota glanced at Inko.
She sighed. “I genuinely don’t know.”
Izuku emerged with a transparent plastic folder full of homemade stickers. Some were uneven stars cut from adhesive craft paper, while others were ordinary labels covered in crayon, marker, glitter glue, and tiny All Might faces whose proportions ranged from recognizable to mildly alarming.
A few had neat adult lettering, probably Inko’s, while others were written in the wobbly block print of a five-year-old. Izuku studied them with enormous seriousness before choosing one. Then he marched toward Daichi. Daichi took a half-step backward.
That nearly did Shota in. Izuku fought with the backing until the tip of his tongue appeared at the corner of his mouth, finally peeled it free, and held up a small glittery star. YOU DID GOOD!
“For helping,” he explained.
Daichi stared at it. “I moved boxes.”
“They’re really heavy.”
“That’s my job.”
Izuku nodded. “You still did it.”
Daichi considered that for several seconds, apparently searching for the trap, before holding out one hand.
Izuku frowned. “No.”
“What?”
“It goes on your shirt.”
A strangled sound escaped Sena.
Daichi turned his head. “Kurose.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re laughing with your whole face.”
Izuku stepped closer and carefully pressed the little sticker to the upper chest of Daichi’s uniform. The star was barely larger than a coin, but he still smoothed it down with both palms, patted it twice, checked one corner, and patted it again.
“There.”
Daichi looked down at YOU DID GOOD! glittering absurdly against the gray fabric. Miki snorted.
Daichi pointed at her. “Don’t.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re about to.”
Izuku turned toward her, spotted the perfectly arranged cones, and brightened all over again. “You did good too!”
Miki’s amusement vanished.
Daichi’s smile arrived slowly. “She worked very hard.”
“You are such a—”
Hoshino cleared her throat.
Miki changed course. “—helpful person.”
Daichi’s grin widened. Izuku was already searching the folder.
“No, kid, really, you don’t have to—”
The sticker he chose was pink and covered in tiny hearts. GOOD JOB! Miki stared at it. Izuku waited.
“…Okay.”
He pressed it onto her sleeve and made sure every edge was stuck before stepping back to admire his work. Miki maintained an expression of profound humiliation until she thought nobody was looking, then rubbed one thumb over the edge to make sure it would not peel away. Shota noticed. So did Hoshino.
Neither said a word. Inko eventually managed to shepherd her son toward the next demonstration, although Izuku walked backward for several steps so he could wave with both arms.
“Do good practicing!”
Daichi watched him disappear into the crowd.
Sena recovered first. “What the hell just happened?”
“Language,” Daichi said automatically.
Everyone looked at him.
Miki’s eyes widened. “You’re protecting the sticker.”
“I am not.”
“You just corrected his language.”
“Kurose is obnoxious.”
“You threatened to put me through a table earlier.”
“That was earlier.”
Sena glanced pointedly toward the glittering star on Daichi’s chest. “Before what?”
Daichi adjusted the crate in his arms. “Shut up.”
Shota retrieved his coffee. It had gone cold. He drank it anyway. The stickers should have been a brief amusement.
Instead, Izuku kept reappearing. At ten-fifteen he passed the work area on the way to a flood-rescue demonstration and spotted Sena carrying two bags of properly sorted recycling. He stopped so abruptly that Inko nearly walked into him.
“You sorted those!”
Sena glanced around as if there might be another adhesive-fingered former burglar nearby. “Me?”
Izuku was already reaching for his backpack. Ten seconds later, Sena wore a tiny GOOD HELPING! sticker on his shirt and was fighting a smile badly enough that nobody had the decency to pretend not to notice.
At ten-forty Kanae helped an elderly visitor secure the folding support frame of a mobility chair, and Izuku materialized with another sticker. At eleven-oh-five a wheeled equipment cart slipped away from a student volunteer and rolled toward the walkway, only for Daichi to catch it one-handed before it struck anyone. Izuku gasped from twenty feet away.
Daichi heard it. By the time the child reached him, curls bouncing wildly and cheeks pink from sunshine and excitement, Daichi was already trying and failing to look indifferent.
“Super save!”
The new sticker was small, crooked, and glittery, with SUPER FAST SAVE!! written around a lightning bolt.
“You were really fast,” Izuku told him after pressing it beside the first one.
Daichi looked down at the two little stars, rubbed the back of his neck, and muttered, “Yeah. Guess so.”
By eleven-thirty, Shota knew they had a problem because Sena voluntarily picked up a discarded juice box. He watched the man carry it toward the recycling station, inspect the symbols on two containers, and deliberately place it in the correct one before looking toward the walkway. Shota folded his arms.
Sena noticed. “What?”
“You’re looking for Midoriya.”
“No.”
“You checked twice.”
“For hazards.”
“You have never voluntarily checked for hazards in your life.”
“That seems unnecessarily judgmental for a rehabilitation supervisor.”
“You stole televisions by sticking them to your back.”
“Two televisions.”
“The third was recovered from the alley.”
“I dropped it.”
“That does not legally transform stolen property into abandoned property.”
Sena looked toward the walkway again. A small voice rang out from across the grass.
“You picked it up!”
Sena straightened so quickly he nearly hurt himself. Izuku hurried toward them, this time with one hand firmly held by his mother, and Sena immediately arranged his face into an expression of exaggerated casualness.
“What, that? It was nothing.”
“You put it in the right one!”
“I did.”
The sticker folder appeared.
Daichi passed behind Sena with a folded table balanced over one shoulder. “Pathetic.”
Sena accepted GOOD CHOICE! with dignity and then spent the next twenty minutes touching the sticker whenever he thought nobody was watching. By lunchtime Shota had reluctantly accepted that Midoriya Izuku had created a functioning behavioral incentive system using glitter, praise, and preschool-level moral certainty.
The family lunch area occupied a shaded lawn near the main training building, while staff and rehabilitation participants ate in an adjoining space that allowed the counselors to maintain supervision without turning the event into a prison visitation. Izuku sat near the edge of the family section with a small green notebook open beside his lunchbox. His rice ball remained untouched. His pencil did not.
Inko tapped one finger against his tray. “Three bites.”
“I’m drawing.”
“I can see that.”
“It’s important.”
“I’m sure it is, but lunch is important too.”
Izuku looked up, visibly troubled by this clash of responsibilities.
“Three bites before notebook,” Inko repeated.
“But Mama…”
“Three.”
He sighed with the weary resignation of a hero accepting a dangerous mission, put down his pencil, and took such an enormous bite that both cheeks puffed outward. Shota looked away before the sight could damage his reputation.
A heavy impact sounded from the rehabilitation area a few minutes later, and he turned immediately. One of the weighted rescue blocks had slipped from a cart toward Daichi’s foot. He caught it halfway down, but one corner struck his boot hard enough to make him swear, and a faint tremor traveled through his forearm as Impact activated.
“Don’t discharge here,” Shota warned as he approached.
“No kidding.”
“There are children.”
“There’s also a rescue block on my foot.”
Daichi carried the stored energy to a reinforced practice wall, pressed one palm against the concrete, and released it with a deep thump that shook dust from the upper edge.
“Does it hurt?”
Shota looked down. Izuku stood beside him. Again.
“How do you keep doing that?”
The child blinked. “Doing what?”
Inko appeared several seconds later carrying the abandoned lunchbox. “Izuku.”
“Sorry.”
“You need to tell me before you walk away.”
“I saw his Quirk.”
“Yes, sweetheart, and his Quirk will still exist after you finish eating.”
Izuku looked toward Daichi with the profound uncertainty of somebody unwilling to accept that claim without peer review. Daichi rolled his wrist.
Izuku’s eyes followed immediately. “What does your Quirk do?”
Daichi looked toward Shota, who glanced at the little green notebook tucked beneath Izuku’s arm. Several pages were already covered in colored arrows, misspelled labels, stick figures, hero symbols, and surprisingly organized clusters of notes.
“Ask him,” Shota said.
Izuku turned back to Daichi. “Can I know?”
Daichi crouched slightly. “I take hits.”
Izuku frowned. “And?”
“And then I hit harder.”
The frown deepened.
“If something hits me,” Daichi clarified, “my body stores part of the force, and I can release it.”
Izuku’s eyes widened. “From your hands?”
“Mostly.”
The boy went still.
Inko noticed and sighed fondly. “There’s the face.”
Shota glanced at her. “What face?”
“The thinking face.”
Izuku already had his pencil out.
“If something falls on you, does that count?”
“Yeah.”
“Punches?”
“Yes.”
“If you fall?”
“Sometimes.”
“What about your feet?”
Daichi blinked. “What about them?”
“Can you put the energy through your feet?”
“No.”
“Can you?”
Daichi opened his mouth and paused. “I don’t know.”
Izuku stared at him. “You don’t know?”
“Nobody asked.”
That answer bothered him enough that his nose wrinkled. His gaze moved from Daichi’s hands to his boots and then to the reinforced wall before the muttering began.
“If the whole body takes the hit but hands are where you learned to let it out, then maybe hands are habit and not the only place, so maybe little bits could go through your feet, except too much would crack the ground, but special boots could spread it out…”
He lowered himself cross-legged onto the grass without seeming to notice he had done so.
“Not giant boots because then running gets hard, maybe layers, and if falling gives you force then maybe landing could too, but knees need to bend because knees aren’t supposed to go backward, Mama says, and if something fell on somebody you might be able to catch it because getting hit gives you energy instead of only hurting you, except everybody has limits and getting squished is bad…”
Inko hid a smile behind her hand. Daichi had crouched fully now, not because he was humoring Izuku but because he was listening.
“What if you could put the stored force into something instead of hitting?” Izuku continued. “Like a support tool that spreads it out somewhere safe.”
Daichi studied the page. “You think I could catch falling stuff?”
Izuku stopped and thought before answering. “Maybe.”
One of Daichi’s eyebrows rose.
“You’d have to practice first.”
Shota felt his own expression soften. The kid was five, excited enough to vibrate, and still knew the difference between possible and certain.
Izuku looked toward the rescue block. “You’re really strong.”
Daichi’s face closed by instinct. He had probably heard that word used as accusation and expectation more often than praise.
“But you’re careful too.”
That got him.
Izuku pointed toward the wall. “You could’ve let the energy out when the block hurt you, but you took it away from everybody first.”
Daichi stared down at him. Shota knew the man’s file well enough to remember the vocabulary scattered through it: aggressive, volatile, dangerous, poor impulse control, high weaponization potential. Nobody had written careful.
Izuku reached for his sticker folder and selected a tiny blue label decorated with stars and a smiling hand. GREAT QUIRK CONTROL! He pressed it beside the others. Daichi looked down.
“You’re weird, kid.”
His voice had gone rough around the edges.
“Izuku,” Inko said gently as she crouched beside her son, “remember that not everybody likes having their Quirk analyzed without permission.”
His smile disappeared.
“Oh.”
Daichi looked up immediately. “I didn’t say I minded.”
Inko paused. Izuku peeked toward him.
Daichi rubbed the back of his neck. “He can keep doing… whatever this is.”
The little boy brightened so quickly it was almost painful.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Does it work the same if you get hit here?”
He pointed at his own stomach.
Daichi sighed, settled onto the grass, and surrendered. “Sure, kid.”
Five minutes later Sena joined them. Then Kanae. By the time Inko persuaded Izuku to finish the rest of his rice ball, several rehabilitation participants were sitting around a five-year-old who was chewing lunch while asking highly specific questions about Quirk mechanics. Hoshino stopped beside Shota and watched Daichi explain his activation threshold.
“He refused to answer half of this during intake.”
“I remember.”
“He told our Quirk specialist to mind her own business.”
“I remember that too.”
Hoshino looked toward Izuku, who was scribbling around a smear of rice on the edge of his notebook. “What exactly is that kid’s Quirk?”
Shota’s gaze dropped to the registration card hanging from Izuku’s neck. QUIRK: NONE REGISTERED Hoshino followed his eyes and fell quiet. Across the grass, Sena held up one hand.
“I can make things stick.”
Izuku leaned closer. “Anything?”
“Most things.”
“Walls?”
“Yes.”
“Metal?”
“Yes.”
“Rope?”
“Yes.”
“People?”
Sena winced. “Technically.”
“You can climb buildings?”
“Yeah.”
Izuku’s whole face lit. “You could rescue people from windows!”
Sena blinked. The pencil was already moving again.
“Or stick rescue ropes places where there’s nowhere good to tie them, but you’d have to test how strong it is first because if it came loose somebody could fall, and maybe gloves with fingers you can cover one at a time so you don’t stick everything accidentally, and you could hold broken pipes together until somebody fixes them, or keep doors from closing, or grab something somebody dropped over an edge without leaning too far…”
Sena stared at his fingertips. “I used it to steal wallets.”
Izuku looked up. Inko’s expression sharpened slightly, while Sena seemed to realize that perhaps he should not have brought up pickpocketing to a preschooler.
“You shouldn’t steal,” Izuku said.
“No.”
“Mama says taking things that aren’t yours hurts people.”
Sena looked toward Inko. She smiled politely. There was steel beneath it.
“Your mother sounds smart.”
“She is.”
The answer came so quickly that Inko’s expression softened.
Izuku returned to his notebook. “Your Quirk can still rescue people.”
Sena said nothing. The boy had already moved on to another sketch. Shota watched him for a moment longer.
Izuku was not pretending that stealing stopped mattering because he liked Sena’s Quirk, nor did he seem to believe having a heroic use for an ability automatically made the person using it heroic. He simply could not understand why the worst use somebody had found for a Quirk should be treated as the only one.
“My Quirk’s better for rescue than his,” Miki announced.
Sena looked at her. “You’re fifteen.”
“So?”
“I’m not arguing with a child.”
“You spent ten minutes showing a five-year-old your fingers because you wanted another sticker.”
“That was educational.”
“You wanted the sticker.”
“Go away.”
Izuku looked between them, delighted rather than alarmed, and then turned toward Miki. “What does yours do?”
Her posture changed immediately. She had clearly been waiting for that question all morning.
“It’s called Skip.”
“Like skipping?”
“Not exactly.”
Miki glanced toward Shota. He shook his head.
“No demonstration.”
“A tiny one?”
“No.”
“One meter?”
“No.”
“Half?”
“Tachibana.”
She sighed. “Fine.”
Izuku tilted his head. “Is it dangerous?”
The excitement disappeared from her face. “No.”
Hoshino gave her a look.
“It isn’t,” Miki insisted. “I got hurt because I hit things.”
Izuku’s brows pulled together.
“So the Quirk isn’t the dangerous part. Stopping is.”
Miki froze. Daichi made a suspicious choking sound.
“Don’t,” she warned.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re thinking loudly.”
Izuku had already begun drawing. “You move really fast, right?”
“Yeah.”
“But you don’t stop really fast.”
“I stop.”
“You said you hit things.”
Daichi laughed openly.
Miki ignored him with visible effort. “I know how to stop.”
“How?”
“I land.”
Daichi covered his face.
Izuku did not laugh. He leaned closer, fascinated. “What happens when you Skip?”
Miki eventually sat on the grass opposite him. “I pick a direction and my Quirk launches me through it really fast. It isn’t teleporting because I’m still moving through the space, but it happens in a burst.”
“How far?”
“Twelve meters if I push.”
Izuku’s mouth made a tiny circle. “Can you do smaller?”
“Yeah.”
“How small?”
“Half a meter.”
“Up?”
“Yes.”
“Down?”
Miki hesitated.
Shota pointed at her. “No.”
“I didn’t say I do it!”
“You were thinking about admitting it.”
Izuku nodded solemnly, apparently filing do not Skip downward away as an important professional safety guideline.
“Can you carry people?”
Miki’s confidence faltered. “I have.”
Shota narrowed his eyes.
She grimaced. “Safely? Not really.”
That admission alone represented more progress than several of her counseling sessions. Izuku began muttering again.
“If you hold them, they move as fast as you, and hurt people might get more hurt if they go fast, especially their neck or back, and both your hands are busy so you can’t catch yourself, but what if you didn’t hold them…”
Miki leaned closer. Izuku drew something that looked like a person wearing an enormous turtle shell.
“A harness?”
“Maybe, with straps here and here, but they have to be fast because emergencies are fast, so click buckles, and maybe handles for people who aren’t hurt…”
He made quiet clicking noises while drawing.
Miki pointed at the sketch. “Where would it attach?”
Izuku looked at her shoulders, then her hips, and scrunched his nose in concentration.
“Here.”
He pointed toward her waist.
“Why?”
“If it’s all on your shoulders and you stop, the person pulls you backward.”
Miki went still. Shota’s attention sharpened.
Izuku added more arrows. “Lower means they’re closer to where you move, but you’d still need head support if they were hurt, and you’d have to ask rescue people who you can move because some hurt people aren’t supposed to move.”
Then he gasped.
“Rope!”
Miki startled. “What?”
“You could bring rescue rope places.”
“What kind of places?”
“Like if a bridge breaks.”
He drew two cliffs that looked like lumpy potatoes.
“If heroes are here and people are over here, you could take a line across.”
“What if there’s nowhere safe to land?”
“Then you shouldn’t go.”
Miki blinked.
“You have to know where you’re going first,” Izuku added, sounding genuinely puzzled that there might be another answer.
Shota watched the words land. Miki’s file contained several incidents in which she had launched herself toward trouble without evaluating what waited at the end of her route. Every adult who tried to correct the behavior had framed it as something she was forbidden to do. Izuku had framed it as part of doing the job correctly.
Miki looked back at the sketch. “Could I use it for evacuation?”
“What’s evacuation?”
“Getting people out of dangerous places.”
“Oh!”
His curls practically bounced with the realization. “Maybe! But lots of people would make you tired. Does Skip make you tired?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“How many what?”
“How many Skips before your legs get tired?”
Miki opened her mouth, then paused. “I don’t know.”
Izuku frowned at her exactly as he had at Daichi.
“You should.”
“Why?”
“So you know when to stop.”
Her expression shifted.
“About thirty little ones,” she admitted after a moment. “Then my legs start shaking.”
Izuku wrote it down.
“Maybe twenty carrying something heavy.”
More writing.
“Ten if it’s a person.”
“That’s still a lot.”
Miki smiled despite herself. “You think?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “You could carry medicine!”
The smile vanished.
“What?”
“If buildings fall and ambulances can’t get through, you could bring medicine.”
The idea was simple enough that it hurt. Miki stared at the notebook.
“Or radios,” Izuku continued. “Or first-aid bags, water, little tools, stuff people need fast, and you don’t always have to fight bad guys because rescue heroes do lots of things.”
Miki swallowed. Shota remembered the wording from one of the assessments in her youth-services file. High pursuit potential; limited rescue application. Izuku had found several possible rescue uses before finishing lunch.
Not all of them would work. Some required support equipment, others would need serious testing, and none of them changed the fact that Miki’s current control was nowhere near professional standards. The important part was that somebody had finally looked.
“They said my Quirk wasn’t good for rescue,” Miki said quietly.
Izuku looked genuinely confused. “But it is.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You saved people.”
“I got arrested.”
“Oh.”
He sat back and considered that with the grave seriousness small children sometimes brought to problems adults had spent years making complicated.
“Did you break rules?”
“Yes.”
“Were they important?”
Miki glanced toward Shota. He let her answer.
“…Some of them.”
“Did you know?”
“Sometimes.”
Izuku thought for a few seconds.
“Then you shouldn’t do that.”
Daichi abruptly became fascinated by the sky. Sena pressed his lips together. Miki stared at Izuku and then laughed. It cracked in the middle, turned warm, and for the first time since Shota had met her, she sounded exactly fifteen.
“No,” she admitted as she wiped beneath one eye. “I probably shouldn’t.”
Izuku nodded, satisfied that the moral issue had been properly settled.
“But you can practice.”
Miki’s laughter faded. He opened the sticker folder again. The PLUS ULTRA!! stickers were easy to spot.
They were slightly larger than the others, although still small enough to fit comfortably in a child’s palm, and covered in red and gold glitter. Each had a tiny All Might face in the corner, and this particular All Might had one eye noticeably higher than the other. Izuku peeled one free.
Miki shook her head. “No.”
He stopped.
“I mean…” Her voice had gone strange. “Why that one?”
“Because you want to be a hero.”
Miki looked away. Every intake form Shota had read insisted she no longer intended to pursue hero licensing. He had never believed her.
“You talk like one,” Izuku continued. “You just need more practice.”
He carefully pressed the little PLUS ULTRA!! sticker onto her shirt over her heart. Miki stared down at it. Daichi lasted perhaps five seconds.
“Damn, Tachibana. Premium sticker.”
She wiped at her eyes. “Shut up.”
“Language,” Sena said.
“Go steal a television.”
“Rehabilitated people don’t do that.”
“You were rehabilitated twenty minutes ago?”
“I’m making progress.”
“You wanted a sticker for recycling.”
“It was the right bin.”
Izuku began giggling, and whatever tension remained dissolved with him. Miki laughed too, no longer bothering to hide that she had been crying. Hoshino stepped closer to Shota while Miki carefully smoothed the sticker flat.
“Her formal review is next month.”
“I know.”
“The youth court order doesn’t prohibit educational placement while she completes diversion.”
“I know.”
“She’d need assessments, tutoring, safety retraining, and approval from half the people currently employed by Musutafu’s juvenile services.”
“That sounds optimistic.”
Hoshino watched Miki ask Izuku to explain the harness again. “I’m not saying she belongs in Heroics tomorrow. I’m saying maybe failing to find a route at fourteen shouldn’t decide the rest of her life.”
Shota could not argue with that. A prickling sense of observation made him look toward the administration building. A small white figure stood behind the tinted glass of a second-floor window. Nezu raised one paw.
Shota’s shoulders sank. Of course he had noticed. There were few things in life more dangerous than Nezu finding something interesting. Five-year-old Midoriya Izuku had apparently become interesting.
Nezu had intended to observe the Restorative Heroics Initiative for twelve minutes and had scheduled twenty because good administrators allowed for contingencies. His tea had gone cold nearly half an hour ago. He remained at the window. Below, Miki Tachibana sat cross-legged in the grass beside a five-year-old while the child filled another page with arrows.
Nezu had read her file. He knew the assessments describing excellent burst mobility, poor deceleration, elevated user-injury risk, questionable route awareness, and limited rescue utility. Midoriya Izuku had watched no formal demonstration and knew almost nothing about the girl before he began asking questions.
Within minutes, he had suggested emergency supply delivery, communication relay, line deployment, broken-terrain traversal, limited evacuation with proper stabilization, and support equipment intended to keep a passenger closer to Tachibana’s center of gravity. Several ideas needed extensive development. One was probably impractical. A few were very good.
The quality of the individual suggestions interested Nezu less than the process that produced them. The boy asked what something could do before deciding what it was for, and when new information complicated his first conclusion, he adjusted rather than defending it. He had learned that Tachibana broke the law and had not excused her; he had simply added needs to follow rules to the same mental problem that already contained could help people.
Adults tended to become attached to labels because labels made complicated decisions easier. Midoriya seemed more interested in how the pieces actually worked. Nezu smiled. The office door opened without a knock.
“No,” Shota said.
Nezu lowered the binoculars. “Good afternoon, Aizawa.”
“No.”
“You appear to have entered the conversation halfway through.”
“I know that face.”
“What face?”
“The one you make when you find something intellectually interesting and everyone around you suffers.”
Nezu placed the binoculars neatly on his desk. “I find that description of my academic curiosity rather unfair.”
“You rerouted half the staff parking lot once because you wanted to see if Hizashi would notice.”
“He did.”
“He drove onto the running track.”
“A useful data point.”
“Leave the kid alone.”
“I haven’t met him.”
“Good. Maintain that.”
“His name is Midoriya Izuku.”
Shota’s eyes narrowed. “You already looked him up.”
“I read his badge.”
“With binoculars.”
“Resourcefulness is a valuable quality.”
Shota stared at him. Nezu smiled pleasantly.
“How long has he been analyzing Quirks?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has he had formal instruction?”
“He’s five.”
“That is his age, not an answer.”
“It’s the answer you’re getting.”
Nezu glanced through the window again. Miki was touching the edge of her sticker as though checking it had not vanished.
“What did you think of Tachibana’s discussion with him?”
Shota’s posture shifted. “He noticed the stopping problem.”
“More than that. Her mobility itself is not her largest weakness. She has poor transition management, weak route assessment, and almost no training in moving external loads. Those are teachable deficiencies.”
“She’s in rehabilitation.”
“At the moment.”
Shota went very still.
“She also broke the law, contaminated police scenes, caused injuries, and still thinks rules become optional whenever she decides she knows better.”
Nezu’s whiskers twitched. “An unfortunately common trait among professional heroes.”
Shota’s mouth almost curved.
“I am not proposing we hand her a uniform tomorrow,” Nezu continued. “She would need a full academic and Quirk assessment, court and counselor approval, additional rescue training, evidence that she can follow instructions, and a viable educational placement. I am merely suggesting that rehabilitation should not require us to ignore potential because somebody failed to recognize it earlier.”
“And the five-year-old had nothing to do with this.”
“Certainly not.”
Nezu paused.
“The sticker was persuasive.”
Shota rubbed one hand down his face. Nezu stepped away from the desk.
“And as for Midoriya-kun…”
“No.”
“I was going to introduce myself.”
“No.”
“I am the principal.”
“You scheduled yourself away from the children’s activities.”
“I have reconsidered.”
“You heard Moriyama say something about personal growth, didn’t you?”
“I found it inspiring.”
“Nezu.”
The principal continued toward the door. Shota followed because leaving Nezu unsupervised with an intellectually fascinating preschooler felt irresponsible. Izuku remained blissfully unaware that his educational future had attracted the attention of the most dangerous academic mind in Japan. He was busy discovering that Kanae Fujimoto could make pain quieter.
“Not exactly,” Kanae corrected.
Izuku knelt opposite her with his notebook balanced over his thighs. “But pain is a feeling.”
“It’s a sensory signal.”
“And your Quirk makes sensory signals quieter.”
Kanae considered that. “Yes.”
“So you can make pain quieter.”
She stilled. That was not the direction she had expected.
“Technically.”
Izuku’s pencil began moving.
“If somebody got hurt really bad and the ambulance was coming, maybe you could make it hurt less so they aren’t scared, but if they can’t feel where they’re hurt then they might move wrong, so maybe only after a doctor checks them, or only a little bit…”
Kanae looked down at her hands.
“And if everything was really loud after a building fell, could you make it quieter?”
“Yes.”
“Explosions?”
“Yes.”
“Sirens?”
“Yes.”
He looked up.
“What about kids?”
Kanae’s expression shifted. “What about them?”
“Sometimes loud things make kids scared.”
She stared at him for a moment. Kanae had used those hands during robberies. She had stolen guards’ vision, taken balance from witnesses, and once numbed a cashier’s arm because he reached for an alarm.
Izuku did not know those details. He only knew what she had just told him, and his first question had been whether she could help someone who was hurting.
“What sticker do I get for that?” she asked.
Izuku brightened and began searching. He eventually selected a slightly wrinkled little label.
GOOD IDEA! Kanae laughed. Shota had never heard that sound from her before.
“No Plus Ultra?”
Izuku shook his head very seriously. “You didn’t do it yet.”
Daichi barked out a laugh.
Kanae studied him, then inclined her head. “Fair.”
Izuku reached toward his notebook and stopped when he noticed Shota standing nearby. His eyes narrowed in concentration. Shota immediately distrusted whatever was happening.
“What?”
Izuku opened his sticker folder.
“Midoriya.”
The little boy hummed while scanning the remaining labels. He passed GOOD TEAMWORK!, paused over SUPER CAREFUL!, rejected it, and flipped to the next row. The tip of his tongue appeared between his lips as he searched. Then his eyes widened.
“Found it!”
The sticker was a yellow star, hardly more than an inch across, with uneven blue lettering. GREAT TEACHER!
Shota stared at it. “I’m not teaching you.”
Izuku blinked.
“Not me.”
He pointed toward Miki, then Daichi, Sena, Kanae, and the other program participants working nearby.
“Them.”
Shota forgot what he had been about to say.
“You tell them when stuff isn’t safe,” Izuku explained, counting on his fingers. “And when they need to try again, and you knew where Mister Daichi could let his Quirk out when his foot got hurt, and you made Miki walk because she wasn’t supposed to Skip everywhere, and you didn’t yell when Mister Sena got stuck to the chair.”
Sena lifted a hand. “I also think that last part deserves recognition.”
Shota ignored him.
Izuku looked back up at him. “When they do bad stuff, you tell them they can’t, but you still let them practice doing good stuff.”
His smile was soft and completely certain.
“That’s teaching.”
Shota had been praised before. Principals had commended his work, fellow heroes trusted him, and people whose lives he had saved had thanked him with varying degrees of tearful sincerity. He had developed reliable methods for surviving all of those situations, most of which involved a short nod followed by leaving before anyone attempted physical affection.
He had no defense prepared for a five-year-old deciding he was a good teacher. Izuku stepped closer. Shota remained still while two tiny hands pressed the sticker against his chest and smoothed it flat. One point of the star curled upward, so Izuku frowned, pushed it down with his thumb, and gave the whole thing one final pat.
“There.”
Shota looked down at the crooked little star. A smiling face had been drawn beneath the words. There was blue glitter on his black shirt.
“You did good,” Izuku added.
Something warm and deeply inconvenient settled behind Shota’s ribs.
“…Thanks, kid.”
Izuku’s smile became enormous. Shota realized the tactical error in accepting the sticker approximately half a second before the child flung both arms around one of his legs.
He froze. Inko covered her mouth. Miki made a sound that might have been a squeal and converted it into a cough when Shota looked at her. Daichi did not even try to hide his grin.
“Not one word.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
Izuku released him just as abruptly as he had grabbed him, apparently satisfied that the hug was complete, and hurried back toward his notebook. Shota remained where he was for a second, glitter on his chest and absolutely no idea what expression his face was making.
Then he noticed Nezu standing beside him. The principal looked at the sticker. He looked at Shota.
“Don’t.”
Nezu’s whiskers twitched. “I said nothing.”
“You were going to.”
“I was only thinking that yellow is quite flattering.”
“Nezu.”
Izuku finally noticed him. His pencil slipped from his hand.
“P-P-P-P—”
Inko turned.
Nezu inclined his head politely. “Good afternoon.”
“PRINCIPAL NEZU!”
Several nearby heads turned. Izuku scrambled upright, stepped on the corner of his notebook, caught himself, bowed too far, straightened too quickly, and then bowed a second time because apparently the first one had been professionally inadequate.
“Hello! I’m Midoriya Izuku and I know who you are because you’re U.A.’s principal and you’re a hero too and your Quirk makes you super smart and there aren’t very many people like you except you’re an animal but also a person, and humans are animals too because Mama said mammals are animals, so I didn’t mean you weren’t a person—”
“Izuku,” Inko whispered.
Both hands flew over his mouth. Nezu looked delighted. Shota recognized disaster taking root.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Midoriya-kun.”
A tiny squeak escaped behind Izuku’s fingers.
Nezu glanced toward the notebook. “I hear you’ve been having an interesting day.”
Izuku slowly lowered his hands. “I saw heroes.”
“And?”
“And hero students.”
Shota exhaled.
Inko looked toward the rehabilitation participants and then back at her son. “Sweetheart, I think we should explain something.”
Izuku frowned.
“They aren’t exactly hero students.”
“But they’re learning at U.A.”
“They are, just not in the way you think.” Inko crouched beside him and rested one hand against his back. “Some of them broke laws. Some hurt people or took things that didn’t belong to them, and some tried to help people but did it without permission or enough training, and that can hurt people too.”
Izuku looked toward Miki. She lowered her eyes. Then he looked toward Daichi.
“You’re villains?”
The question was quiet. Daichi’s jaw tightened.
Sena studied the grass. Kanae folded her hands together. Shota waited.
Izuku looked at his mother again. “Are they going to jail?”
“Some already did. Some have other consequences.”
“Because they did bad things?”
“Yes.”
His little face became deeply serious. “And this program teaches them not to?”
“It helps them learn how to make better choices.”
“Does it teach Quirk stuff?”
“Yes.”
“And rescue stuff?”
“Some.”
Izuku looked back toward the group, puzzling through the new information.
“So they’re practicing.”
Inko blinked.
He pointed toward Miki. “She broke rules because she wanted to help, but she has to learn the rules because rescuing people wrong can hurt them.”
Miki’s mouth parted. Then he indicated Daichi.
“He hurt people, but today he didn’t hit anybody, and he carried boxes, and he caught the cart, and he practiced his Quirk without breaking anything.”
Daichi looked away.
“And Miss Kanae used her Quirk for stealing, but she can practice using it for helping.”
Izuku frowned, plainly confused about why the adults were treating this conclusion as complicated.
“That’s what students do. They learn stuff they don’t know yet.”
His shoulders lifted in a small shrug.
“Heroes have to practice too.”
Beside Shota, Nezu became very still. Shota glanced down and found the principal wearing a tiny, dangerous smile.
“Oh, no.”
Izuku heard him.
His face fell. “Did I do bad?”
“No.” The answer came out much faster than Shota intended, and Inko looked toward him in surprise. His fingers brushed the edge of the GREAT TEACHER! sticker as he added more quietly, “You didn’t.”
Nezu stepped forward. “Quite the opposite. Midoriya-kun, would you mind if I asked you a question?”
Izuku stared as though the principal had offered him the moon.
“Yes!”
“Suppose someone had a Quirk that could make objects very light while they remained in contact with them, but the object immediately returned to its normal weight as soon as they let go. How might that help during a building collapse?”
Izuku froze.
Inko sighed fondly. “You’ve done it now.”
The boy’s eyes unfocused.
“Well, if it only works on objects then maybe not people, unless people count as objects technically but that would be rude, and if rubble fell on somebody they could make it lighter so rescue heroes could lift it, but if they let go too early it gets heavy again so somebody else has to be holding it first…”
Nezu lowered himself to sit on the grass opposite him. Izuku followed, already drawing.
“And if rubble is holding other rubble up, making part of it lighter might move everything, so you’d have to check first, but rescue tools could be lighter so heroes could carry more, and maybe heavy medical equipment could get somewhere faster…”
He gasped.
“Does it need skin?”
Nezu’s ears lifted. “Excellent question.”
Shota closed his eyes. It was over. The principal of U.A. High School was sitting cross-legged on the grass with a five-year-old, happily discussing hypothetical Quirk mechanics while convicted offenders, vigilantes, counselors, one exhausted underground hero, and Midoriya Inko watched.
Miki leaned toward Daichi. “Think he’s getting recruited?”
Daichi stared at her. “He’s five.”
“So?”
“You cannot recruit a five-year-old.”
Miki pointed toward Nezu. “You telling him that?”
Daichi considered it.
“No.”
Izuku suddenly remembered the sticker folder. His head snapped toward it. Shota knew that look.
“No.”
Izuku started searching.
“Midoriya.”
He found a small silver-edged star with green lettering. Nezu watched curiously as Izuku peeled it free and leaned forward. GREAT LISTENER!
The sticker landed neatly on the front of Nezu’s waistcoat. Nezu looked down at it.
“You listened to all of it,” Izuku explained, “and you asked a really good question.”
For one rare moment, the principal seemed genuinely caught off guard. Then his smile softened.
“Thank you, Midoriya-kun. I shall treasure it.”
Izuku glowed. Shota looked from the GREAT LISTENER! sticker to the GREAT TEACHER! star on his own chest.
“This is spreading.”
“I believe it suits us,” Nezu said.
“Don’t encourage him.”
Izuku was already looking back into the folder.
“I still have stickers!”
Every program participant within hearing distance straightened.
Daichi reacted first. “How many?”
Shota turned.
Daichi cleared his throat. “For general planning purposes.”
Sena narrowed his eyes at the sticker sheet. “There’s another Plus Ultra.”
Miki covered hers protectively.
Kanae stood. “The lunch tables need clearing.”
Daichi’s head snapped toward her. “You hate table duty.”
“I’ve experienced personal growth.”
“You want another sticker.”
“I can want two things.”
Sena was already gathering trays.
“Move.”
“You’re cheating.”
“It’s community service!”
Izuku bounced onto his toes. “I have a teamwork one!”
Daichi grabbed the other side of Sena’s stack. “Teamwork.”
“You’re twenty-nine.”
“I’m also carrying my half.”
The next fifteen minutes were ridiculous. Sena sorted recycling with the concentration of a surgeon, Kanae helped a frightened child near the serving area after first asking the child’s mother and an event medic whether a tiny amount of sensory dampening would be appropriate, and Daichi lifted a folding table before visibly remembering that Izuku had praised him for being careful and slowing down enough to maneuver it safely around another volunteer.
Miki gathered supply bags, bent her knees instinctively to activate Skip, and stopped herself. She looked toward Shota. He raised one eyebrow. Miki sighed and walked.
Izuku noticed. Of course he did. He ran after her and selected another tiny star. GOOD DECISION!
Miki stared at it. “I walked.”
“You wanted to Skip.”
“How did you know?”
Izuku pointed at her feet. “You do this first.”
He bent his knees and leaned forward to demonstrate, immediately overbalanced, and pitched toward the grass. Miki caught him beneath both arms. For half a second Izuku dangled there with his curls hanging into his eyes. He looked up at her upside down.
“See?”
Miki burst out laughing. “You’re ridiculous.”
Izuku grinned. “Sticker?”
She set him upright. “Yeah, okay. Sticker.”
By the end of lunch the program uniforms glittered here and there with small bits of handmade praise rather than entire sheets of decoration. Most participants had collected somewhere between four and seven stickers over the course of the morning, each one tied to something Izuku had actually seen them do.
Daichi had his original YOU DID GOOD!, the crooked SUPER FAST SAVE!!, GREAT QUIRK CONTROL!, and several smaller stars for teamwork and careful choices. Miki guarded PLUS ULTRA!! as though somebody might attempt theft, while Sena and Kanae had accumulated their own little collections. Shota still wore only one.
He had made no attempt to remove GREAT TEACHER! Nezu noticed. For once, he was wise enough to say nothing. They stood together watching a group of people who had arrived expecting an ordinary service assignment compete to clear the lunch area safely enough to impress a preschooler.
“This is ridiculous,” Shota said.
“Quite effective, though.”
“They’re competing for stickers.”
“People have responded to stranger incentives.”
“Moriyama has assault convictions.”
“And now he is carefully carrying a folding table because a five-year-old told him he was good at being careful.”
Shota had no answer to that. Across the lawn, Daichi stepped aside to let another participant pass instead of forcing his way through a narrow opening, while Miki crouched beside Izuku as he attempted to demonstrate his imaginary rescue harness using the straps of his own backpack and somehow trapped one arm behind himself.
She untangled him patiently. No Skip. No rushing. Nezu’s attention settled on her.
“I want her assessment moved forward.”
Shota sighed. “For Heroics?”
“For the possibility of a Heroics pathway.”
“She still broke the law.”
“Yes.”
“She still has serious safety deficiencies.”
“Many.”
“She still thinks rules become optional whenever she thinks she knows better.”
Nezu’s whiskers twitched. “We have both taught licensed professionals with that problem.”
That was difficult to argue.
“She does not get a Hero Course seat because Midoriya-kun found useful applications for her Quirk,” Nezu continued. “She will complete whatever requirements juvenile services and the court impose, and she will need to demonstrate academics, first aid, rescue knowledge, Quirk control, judgment, and the ability to obey lawful instructions even when she disagrees.”
“Good.”
“But a rehabilitation program should not become another door we close simply because someone already stumbled on the way to it.”
Shota looked toward Miki. She had freed Izuku from his backpack and was listening to him explain something with both hands, PLUS ULTRA!! glittering over her heart.
“If she qualifies,” Shota said.
“If she qualifies,” Nezu agreed.
After a moment, his mouth curved.
“Heroes have to practice too.”
Shota groaned. “You are never going to stop saying that.”
“Almost certainly not.”
“And the kid?”
Nezu looked toward Izuku. There was glitter on the end of his nose now, and Inko was trying to wipe it away while he twisted impatiently because apparently basic facial cleanliness interfered with urgent notebook work. The GREAT LISTENER! sticker sat crookedly on Nezu’s waistcoat.
“The child?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
For several seconds, Nezu simply watched. Midoriya Izuku was five years old and, according to the registration form, Quirkless. He was also observant enough to notice details adults had dismissed, curious enough to ask questions before accepting conclusions, compassionate without being foolish about consequences, and apparently capable of reorganizing the behavior of a rehabilitation group with craft supplies.
He had been at U.A. for only a few hours. He had already prompted a counselor to reconsider how one teenager’s future was being evaluated, suggested legitimate applications for several Quirks their owners had used almost exclusively for crime, convinced grown adults to compete over tiny handmade stickers, and hugged Eraser Head without suffering any obvious consequences. Nezu touched the edge of the sticker on his waistcoat.
“I think I would enjoy teaching him.”
Shota stared down at him. “He is five.”
“Then we have plenty of time.”
Shota immediately regretted every decision that had led him here. Across the field, Izuku stood on his toes and lifted the increasingly empty sticker folder over his head.
“Who did good?”
Several voices answered at once. The response startled a helpless giggle out of him, and soon he was laughing so hard that his eyes squeezed shut and his shoulders shook. Inko caught him around the middle when he began tipping backward, laughing with him as his yellow All Might backpack slid sideways.
Miki watched them for a moment before looking down at the crooked PLUS ULTRA!! sticker over her heart. For the first time since a police officer had closed handcuffs around her wrists, she let herself imagine that becoming a hero might not be something she had already ruined forever. Nearby, Daichi noticed one corner of his GREAT QUIRK CONTROL!
sticker beginning to lift and carefully pressed it flat with his thumb. Shota’s fingers brushed the yellow star on his own chest. Nobody commented on either gesture. The afternoon festival continued around them in a blur of bright awnings, excited children, hero demonstrations, scattered laughter, and sunlight catching on tiny flecks of glitter.
The Restorative Heroics Initiative would still have difficult days after this one, because stickers could not erase criminal records, repair harm, teach judgment, or transform good intentions into good choices. Everyone wearing one of those gray-and-blue uniforms still had work ahead of them, and some of that work would be difficult.
Izuku did not seem bothered by the idea. As far as he was concerned, needing practice was not proof that somebody could never become better. It was the reason people practiced in the first place. He tugged his yellow All Might backpack higher onto his shoulders, spotted someone carrying a box at the other end of the field, and immediately brightened.
“Mama, look! He’s helping!”
Inko caught the back of his shirt before his feet could follow his attention. “You’re finishing your juice first.”
“But Mama—”
“Juice.”
Izuku looked toward the box, then at the juice pouch in his hand, then back toward the box. His little face crumpled beneath the terrible burden of responsibility before he attacked the straw with the determination of someone trying to set a world record.
Nezu chuckled. Shota glanced down at him, then touched the GREAT TEACHER! star on his chest.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
Miki heard him and laughed. Daichi nearly dropped the box he was carrying. Izuku finished his juice, triumphantly shoved the empty pouch into his mother’s waiting hand, and took off across the grass with his yellow backpack bouncing behind him and the last few glittery stickers clutched against his chest.
U.A.’s experimental rehabilitation program would eventually produce reports, assessments, court summaries, revised training recommendations, and enough paperwork to make several adults reconsider their career choices. None of those documents were likely to mention the five-year-old who changed the entire tone of one sunny outreach day.
They probably should have. Midoriya Izuku had arrived at U.A. believing that people who were learning deserved encouragement, that every Quirk was worth understanding, and that doing something good ought to be noticed. By the time he left, several people had started believing him. And Principal Nezu had found himself a future student.